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Measuring Earth-Life Transitions: Ecometric Analysis of Functional Traits from Late Cenozoic Vertebrates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2017

P. David Polly  and
Jason J. Head
P. David Polly
Affiliation:
Departments of Geological Sciences, Biology, and Anthropology, Indiana University, 1001 E. 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405 USA
Jason J. Head
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, Downing Street, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EJ United Kingdom
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Abstract

Ecometrics is the quantitative study of functional traits at the community level, and the environmental sorting of those traits at regional and continental scales. Functional traits are properties of organisms that have a direct physical or physiological relationship to an underlying quality of the environment, which in turn has indirect links to broader environmental factors such as temperature, precipitation, elevation, atmospheric composition, or sea level. When the same environmental factor affects the performance of many taxa, ecometric sorting is the result. Ecometric patterns in trait distributions across space and through time are therefore a product of biogeographic sorting, evolution, and extinction driven by changes in Earth systems. We review concepts associated with ecometrics, with examples that illustrate how trait-based approaches differ from taxon-based methods, how ecometrics can be used to study Earth-life transitions in the fossil record, and how ecometrics can be used to compare Earth-life transitions that differ in temporal or geographic scale. This paper focuses on the climatic and biome changes of the Great Plains of North America during the Miocene, when grasslands came to be the dominant vegetation type, and of the Anthropocene of the American Midwest, which saw extensive landscape changes in the nineteenth century.

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Research Article
Information
The Paleontological Society Papers , Volume 21: Earth-Life Transitions: Paleobiology in the Context of Earth System Evolution , October 2015 , pp. 21 - 46
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Copyright © 2015 by The Paleontological Society 

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